This isolation of the part from the whole is the beginning of the individuality of things. It may be plant, it may be animal, it may be man, and it may be even the so-called angels in heaven. Any consciousness of one's being separate from what one sees is called the individual sense or Asmita or self-sense. Grossly put, it is what we know as Ahamkara or egoism. The sense of one's own existence as apart from other things is called egoism, basically, philosophically, or in the language of Yoga and Samkhya. The isolation from the Supreme is accompanied simultaneously with the reversal of perception, which means to say, that the universe appears as an outside object; and the universe appears as an object which is material, that is, bereft of consciousness. The wall does not seem to have any consciousness, and everything that is external is divested of intelligence, because intelligence cannot see intelligence. It can only be inferred as existing. What we see outside is only an appearance of the body or a movement of it, but the actual seeing principle cannot be seen. Because, the seer cannot be seen. The presence of the seer in me can only be inferred by the manifestations of it. The objective world appears as an external something, and therefore, there is a necessity felt inside in one's own consciousness to regain that unity which has been lost. Because truth always triumphs, reality asserts itself. And the reality is that the world is not outside us. The truth is that the world is not outside us. This circumstance of the universe being outside us, or our being outside the universe, is a false situation. So, we want to rectify this mistake by coming in contact with everything, grabbing all things, and making them our own! The desire to possess property, and to grab things to the largest extent possible, is basically a desire to get united with the Almighty. The desire to possess is a desire to unite. But, because of the reversal that has taken place, this union is not possible. The reflection cannot unite itself with the original, because the two are basically, qualitatively, different. So, despite all our desires to come in contact with things, we do not really come in contact with them. So, every desire is frustrated in the end. We go on sorrowing in spite of our efforts to possess things. Desires are condemned because of this error involved in the attempt to fulfil a desire, though there is a basic piety behind the manifestation of every desire. Every desire is holy in the sense that it is fundamentally a wish to unite oneself with all things. But, there is also the devilish aspect behind it, namely, that it is trying to come physically in contact with the object for its satisfaction, in space and in time, which is an impossibility.

The reflection cannot be decorated in order to beautify the original. This is an image that occurs in a great passage of Acharya Sankara in one of his works. If a person wants to decorate himself and put on a necklace, or put a mark on his forehead, he looks at his face in a mirror. But he does not put the necklace on the image in the mirror; he puts it on himself. The moment his original self is decorated, the image is automatically decorated. He has no need to decorate the image or beautify it again, in addition to the effort on his part to beautify himself. Now, all our desires are attempts at beautifying, decorating or possessing the reflections, ignoring the original. Because, the original is not an externality, and our desires ordinarily are desires for those objects which are external to ourselves. Here lies the basic mistake in our attempts at the fulfilment of desires. So, while there is some sort of a significance in the manifestation of every desire which is worthwhile, while there is a divinity aspect in every desire, the opposite of it also is simultaneously present, which makes it very difficult to understand the justification or otherwise for the fulfilment of any desire. It requires great caution to understand where we are moving, and what is the basic reason behind our movements. Thus, in the isolation of the individual from the cosmic forces, there is an automatic reversal of perspective, a reversal in the process of the part perceiving the whole. The part does not see the whole properly. The object does not retain its originality when it is beheld by the subject in space and in time. There is a distortion that automatically takes place, and a misguided representation of the objects happens, when the isolated individuals begin to judge things outside. So, we cannot judge anything correctly from an individual standpoint, because this judgement of any individual in respect of the objects outside is based on the reversal process that has already taken place. And unless the individual places himself in the position of the original Supreme Being, his judgements may not be correct always.

The descent has not ended here. We have to become worse still. The more we consider our predicament in the world, the more will we start crying and weeping. We have not merely been banished from the great realm of the Brahma-Loka, the Garden of Eden; we have not merely been twisted in our brains by the reversal process of perception. Something worse still has taken place. We are going down and down into farther and farther extensions, away from the Ultimate Reality. What has happened? The movement outside in space and in time is a mistake in our evaluation of things. Today, people think that going to the moon or the Mars is a great achievement. It is not. Very, very sorry is the state of affairs. While the moon is good enough and the Mars is quite all right, the desire to move outwardly for the purpose of knowing what the moon is or the Mars is, is a mistake on our part. We cannot know anything by moving like this outwardly. Because, outwardness is not the real nature of things. Externality or objectivity is not their true nature. So, to move towards an object, moon or whatever it is, externally through space, is a misdirected attitude of our consciousness. Yoga tells us that to know a thing, one has to be the thing, and not merely look at the thing. And one cannot be the moon, as we all know very well. And what is the use of running to it? It does not make us wiser in any manner. The ancient wisdom moves in a direction, perhaps quite the opposite of the way in which modern mind works in these days. Yoga is not a contact physically with anything. It is a union of being with Being.

So, this isolation, attended with a reversal of perception, causes certain difficulties in us, just as one disease, if neglected and not cured promptly, makes room for another disease. First it is a little constipation, and then a little headache, then temperature, and then more complications one after another! The result is that one becomes a chronic case, because a little difficulty was neglected in the beginning. In the same way, first it is an isolation of man from the Supreme; then there is a reversal of perception by which the universe appears as an external object. Now, this perception of the universe as an external object requires a certain apparatus of perception. So, the individual manufactures certain instruments. These are the sense-organs and the psychological structures within us - the mind, the reason, the ego, the subconscious, the unconscious and so on. Also, as a person who has received a tremendous blow on his head may lose his sensation for the time being, and not know what has happened to him, the individual is given a terrific blow the moment there is a severance of himself from the Whole. And so, there is a sudden unconsciousness. He falls as it were, not knowing what has happened. This is the first catastrophe, a swoon into which we fall by the blow struck on us by the very act of separation. Then, this sleeping gradually turns into a swoonish perception, which is like a dream observation of things. The man who is in swoon slowly wakes up and sees things hazily, but not clearly. And later on, he begins to see clearly, but wrongly. The waking state starts.

The three states - sleep, dream and waking - are the three houses, the three citadels, of the isolated consciousness, says the Aitareya Upanishad. These are the three cities of the three demons mentioned in the Puranas as the Tripuras - one made of gold, one made of silver, and one made of iron. We go round and round as if we are seated in a merry-go-round. We rotate through these three experiences of sleeping, dreaming and waking. No other experience is possible. These three states are the modified conditions of the individual consciousness. They are capable of a further division into what are usually known as the sheaths, or the Koshas, in the language of the Vedanta. The dark, causal, sleepy condition is known as the Anandamaya Kosha. Then, the externalised faculty of intelligence manifest out of it as a tendril growing out of the seed, is called the intellect. Simultaneously manifest with it is egoism, the mind that thinks, the Prana that operates, and the body that is seen. So, the causal condition is called the Anandamaya Kosha; the intellect is the Vijnanamaya Kosha; the mind is the Manomaya Kosha; the vital body inside is the Pranamaya Kosha; and the physical body is the Annamaya Kosha, the food sheath as we call it.

This is the descent that has taken place. We have come to the body. We look at the body as a very hard and solid substance. We have dropped from the skies; and we have come down lower and lower; firstly separating ourselves, then looking outside, then manufacturing the three states of consciousness, then the five sheaths. Even that does not seem to be enough for us; we are not satisfied. We go down further still. What we call organisational life, the social life, is a further movement. An individual cannot be resting himself in the individuality merely. He feels the urge to connect himself with the other individuals. It is not enough if one has merely entered into this body. It does not mean that everything is over. Because, the finitude of individual existence is totally sorrow-striking, the encasement of consciousness within the walls of the body is so very intolerable that the finite being, in his intense restlessness caused by this lodgement in the body, struggles to get out of this finitude. The prisoner wishes to get out of the prison at the earliest opportunity, by any means available, by all means available. And what are the means available to us when we are in this body? To remove this finitude; the individual tries to expand this finitude itself through adding many finitudes together and increasing the quantity of the finitude, giving it an appearance of a larger dimension. The finite being expands himself as it were, he delimits himself as it were, by adding on to his own finitude other finitudes. One is not sufficient; we add one more and it becomes two. Two is not adequate, another one to make three, and so on. We go on adding finitudes under the impression that many finitudes in an aggregate make a sort of infinite. But, the infinite is not an aggregate of finitudes. So, here again, we are a failure. That is why the rich man is not happy. The person who exercises authority in society, socially or politically, is not happy either. No one becomes happy by making a collection of aggregates of finitudes, physically or psychologically. Because, the finite being remains finite in spite of the multiplication of the units of finitude. The relationship of one finite being with another finite being is called social relation. It may be with another human being or with any other thing in the world. Any kind of external relation is a society formation. And we find that we cannot exist without this. Thus we have come rolling, down and down, to this level of a social consciousness, which has precipitated further into what is called political consciousness, the last level into which we have fallen, the most artificial of organisations that we can think of.

Now, the whole purpose of Yoga practice is to regain the lost kingdom. First of all, we have to know where our kingdom is. We have been thrown further and further, down and down, away from the centre of our being. The system of Patanjali, particularly, is very scientific and very logical. And the great teacher takes his stand on the lowest of realities. Because, educational psychology requires that a teacher or a student should take the lowest standpoint first and not go to the higher ones when the lower ones have not been properly investigated into, studied and transcended. Yoga is a gradual transcendence and not an abnegation of realities. Yoga does not require one to renounce realities, but to transcend lower realities for the purpose of gaining the higher. So many a time we think that Yoga means Sannyasa, and we equate Sannyasa with a throwing out of physical particulars, a renouncing of homesteads and chattel, father and mother and job, and sitting somewhere. This is not Yoga. Because, Yoga is not a giving up of things, but a giving up of wrong notions about things, and about the world as a whole. The essence of renunciation or Sannyasa, monkhood or nunhood is not a renunciation of objects, but the renunciation of the objectness or the externality of the objects. It is the renunciation of the idea that the objects are outside us. That is Sannyasa. Merely to move from one place to another and think that we have renounced something is a mistake. Because, even if we move geographically, physically, from one place to another, the object of our supposed renunciation still remains outside our perception; we still think of it as an external thing, we still have a judgement or an opinion over it, and the renunciation of it has not taken place.

Yoga requires of us a renunciation, no doubt. Patanjali says that Vairagya and Abhyasa should go together. The Bhagavad Gita also says the same thing. Vairagya means renunciation, abnegation, Tyaga or relinquishment. Abhyasa is positive Practice. But, relinquishment or abandonment or abnegation or renunciation of what? That has to be made clear first. The great gospel of the Bhagavad Gita is a standing message to all seekers of Yoga, wherein is hammered into our minds the necessity to understand what renunciation is, what Asakti is. It is attachment to things that is to be renounced, and not the things as such, though there are various physical methods and social needs that may have to be abided by for the purpose of achieving this true renunciation. But, basically, it is an absence of taste for things, which is called renunciation, and not an absence of the physical proximity of objects. If taste remains, true renunciation has not taken place, even if the objects are left physically far behind. Here, the problem is a problem of consciousness. The whole of Yoga or philosophy is a study of consciousness ultimately. And, the problem does not leave us merely because the senses have been severed from their contact with the physical nature of their objects.